Trondheim: Burke and Bailey Finish in Top20

It was a perfect day, the first competition day of this week's Biathlon World Cup in Trondheim, Norway. The sun was shining and there was almost no wind at the stadium - a perfect days for the thousands of fans who came to the stadium to watch the men's sprint race. 

Yet, those perfect conditions for spectators made it quite hard for some athletes to get a good result as U.S. coach Per Nilsson explained: "It is already a difficult track when the snow is fast. But with conditions like that the athletes who started with a higher startnumber had a lot of problems on the track because it got slower and slower."

So that's why Nilsson couldn't be more proud that Tim Burke and Lowell Bailey managed to finish in the Top20 anyway. Burke had his best season result with a ninth place and was quite satisfied after the race: "I was pretty disappointed with my last races in Vancouver so I am really happy that I managed such a good result here. I shot only one penalty and that was actually the first target I tried to hit. I wanted to calm my breath down at the shooting range but the course was quite hard so I wasn't as calm as I wanted when I tried to hit the first target. But nevertheless I am really happy that I had such a good race." 

Lowell Bailey experienced, what all starters with higher number had to go through: The course got really slow. Nevertheless, thanks to a clean shooting he still managed to finish on 20th place. "I just did my thing. When I started I already saw, that the course was getting deeper and deeper. But I just tried to not think about it. And it worked! I stayed focused on the shooting range and although I am pretty tired and still have jetlag, I showed a good skiing performance."

With Jeremy Teela on 56th place three U.S. athletes will start at Saturday's pursuit competition. "We will see how they do then. But the team is in a good shape. I am really proud of them", commented Per Nilsson.